We started off our fourth anniversary by totally forgetting that it was our anniversary until Tamara looked at her watch and saw the "8 23 TH" just above the time. But no time for mushy romantic thingies as we have to walk across Dingle peninsula.

Our guide took out a topographic map of Dingle and showed that we were going to walk along an old road, over a hill, then down another road to a small town. In truth, we were going to climb yet another mountain. It was just called a hill because the other high rock things were called "mountains", but this wasn't as high. It's like deciding to call Lake Huron a pond because Lakes Michigan and Superior were right next to Huron, which is much smaller than the other two. This was the mentality we had to deal with.

So it was up again, up about 900 feet to the boggy bits. Boggy bits are what the Irish call "super saturated mud". The boggy bits atop this unnamed mountain/hill were fun to dash through. They made a quite satisfactory squishing sound as they tried to pull our boots off. "Skwysh-slorp!" I understand that the boggy bits at the very tip top of Mangerton Mountain were much worse.

Up there, we saw Lough Anascaul, so named after a chieftain's daughter named Scaul (Yep, I thought she'd be named "Anna", too). The story goes as such: One day, Scaul was down by the side of the lake when she heard her lover call for help. He was wounded in battle up around the top of the "hill", so Scaul dove into the water and swam across to help him. When she reached the other side, the echoes tricked her into thinking that her wounded lover was on the other side of the lake, so she swam back to where she started. She wound up swimming back and forth across the lake and eventually drowned. I imagine the lover died from his wounds. Anyway, that whole area has things named after her: river, lake, and town.

No, I'm not kidding. Her name was Scaul.

Speaking of, the Irish really should just decide how to spell things. Here on the map, the town is called "Annascaul". In the town, I saw that and "Anascaul". This map also has the lake called "Anscaul". Oh. According to the map, the hill we climbed over is called Com Dubh. It has the mountain symbol next to it. "Hill". Ha.

After that, we headed back to our home base where the guide said we'll be climbing a mountain tomorrow.

I'm planning on soaking my legs for hours when we get back to the states.

We spent the night writing postcards. The thing about postcards is this. All during the vacation we buy them; the last few days we write the postcards, the day before we leave we attempt to remember to mail them, a few days after we return they arrive -- at which time we've probably already spoken to them. We're silly like that.

-FP